Off the Top of My Head: April 18, 2014

Joe Crawford

Good news from Silicon Valley. The nerds at Google are offering to let anyone buy their new Google Glass product soon. The only catch is that you will only be able to do this for a whopping period of exactly one Earth day.

Up until now only specially, selected people (the “in” crowd) were allowed to have them. And they did what any reasonably, emotionally balanced person would do in that situation: wear them in public as much as they could so they could feel like a big shot.

Now you’ve got to have quite a desirable product if you think you only have to open it up for sales to the general public and not worry about a profit. That’s what I call marketing!

They’ve hyped up expectations so much for this new product that I’m sure people will be dropping out of trees and coming out of the woodwork to wait in line to fork over their hard-earned money. They’ll probably be camping out days in advance. They’d better have police with riot gear armed to the teeth standing by, because line-jumpers are likely to end up in intensive care.

So what will it cost you to own a set of these high-tech peepers? Let’s just say if you don’t have a job you earned with a college degree, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. A pair will set you back about $1,500. You could own about 10 pairs of Ray-Ban glasses for that. Only Ray-Ban won’t make you nearly as popular or get you punched in the nose like Google Glass spectacles will.

That’s because one annoying feature of Google Glasses are that they come equipped with a digital camera, which records everything the person is staring at. This is especially troublesome when they wear them into a bar where people generally don’t want to be photographed getting plastered after work while badmouthing their bosses. That’s already gotten wearers into a few arguments, many of which have resulted in a broken nose, black eye and bruised egos.

And there’s no light or indicator to tell people the Google Glass camera is on. So when confronted with one of these Google Glass wearers, I would treat them just like a microphone. Always assume it’s live.

One thing’s for sure. Many Google Glass purchasers are sure to learn a lesson or two about what happens when a new technology meets modern norms and manners. After a few bloody noses and dotted eyes, they’ll find out their eyesight might not improve nearly as much as their hindsight.